William Wordsworth The Pedlar

Him had I seen the day before, alone And in the middle of the public way Standing to rest himself. His eyes were turned Towards the setting sun, while, with that staff Behind him fixed, he propped a long white pack Which crossed his shoulders, wares for maids who live In lonely villages or straggling huts. I knew himhe was born of lowly race On Cumbrian hills, and I have seen the tear Stand in his luminous eye when he described The house in which his early youth was passed, And found I was no stranger to the spot. I loved to hear him talk of former days And tell how when a child, ere yet of age To be a shepherd, he had learned to read His bible in a school that stood alone, Sole building on a mountain's dreary edge, Far from the sight of city spire, or sound Of minster clock. From that bleak tenement He many an evening to his distant home In solitude returning saw the hills Grow larger in the darkness, all alone Beheld the stars come out above his head, And travelled through the wood, no comrade near To whom he might confess the things he saw. So the foundations of his mind were laid. In such communion, not from terror free, While yet a child, and long before his time, He had perceived the presence and the power Of greatness, and deep feelings had impressed Great objects on his mind with portraiture And colour so distinct that on his mind They lay like substances, and almost seemed To haunt the bodily sense. He had received A precious gift, for as he grew in years With these impressions would he still compare All his ideal stores, his shapes and forms, And, being still unsatisfied with aught Of dimmer character, he thence attained An active power to fasten images

Upon his brain, and on their pictured lines Intensely brooded, even till they acquired The liveliness of dreams. Nor did he fail, While yet a child, with a child's eagerness Incessantly to turn his ear and eye On all things which the rolling seasons brought To feed such appetite. Nor this alone Appeased his yearningin the after day Of boyhood, many an hour in caves forlorn And in the hollow depths of naked crags He sate, and even in their fixed lineaments, Or from the power of a peculiar eye, Or by creative feeling overborne, Or by predominance of thought oppressed, Even in their fixed and steady lineaments He traced an ebbing and a flowing mind, Expression ever varying. Thus informed, He had small need of books; for many a tale Traditionary round the mountains hung, And many a legend peopling the dark woods Nourished imagination in her growth, And gave the mind that apprehensive power By which she is made quick to recognize The moral properties and scope of things. But greedily he read and read again Whate'er the rustic vicar's shelf supplied: The life and death of martyrs who sustained Intolerable pangs, and here and there A straggling volume, torn and incomplete, Which left half-told the preternatural tale, Romance of giants, chronicle of fiends, Profuse in garniture of wooden cuts Strange and uncouth, dire faces, figures dire, Sharp-kneed, sharp-elbowed, and lean-ankled too, With long and ghostly shanks, forms which once seen Could never be forgottenthings though low, Though low and humble, not to be despised By such as have observed the curious links With which the perishable hours of life Are bound together, and the world of thought Exists and is sustained. Within his heart Love was not yet, nor the pure joy of love, By sound diffused, or by the breathing air, Or by the silent looks of happy things, Or flowing from the universal face Of earth and sky. But he had felt the power

Of Nature, and already was prepared By his intense conceptions to receive Deeply the lesson deep of love, which he Whom Nature, by whatever means, has taught To feel intensely, cannot but receive. Ere his ninth year he had been sent abroad To tend his father's sheep; such was his task Henceforward till the later day of youth. Oh then what soul was his, when on the tops Of the high mountains he beheld the sun Rise up and bathe the world in light. He looked, The ocean and the earth beneath him lay In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touched, And in their silent faces he did read Unutterable love. Sound needed none, Nor any voice of joy: his spirit drank The spectacle. Sensation, soul, and form, All melted into him; they swallowed up His animal being. In them did he live, And by them did he livethey were his life. In such access of mind, in such high hour Of visitation from the living God, He did not feel the God, he felt his works. Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired. Such hour by prayer or praise was unprofaned; He neither prayed, nor offered thanks or praise; His mind was a thanksgiving to the power That made him. It was blessedness and love. A shepherd on the lonely mountain-tops, Such intercourse was his, and in this sort Was his existence oftentimes possessed. Oh then how beautiful, how bright, appeared The written promise. He had early learned To reverence the volume which displays The mystery, the life which cannot die, But in the mountains did he FEEL his faith, There did he see the writing. All things there Breathed immortality, revolving life, And greatness still revolving, infinite. There littleness was not, the least of things Seemed infinite, and there his spirit shaped Her prospectsnor did he believe; he saw. What wonder if his being thus became Sublime and comprehensive? Low desires, Low thoughts, had there no place; yet was his heart Lowly, for he was meek in gratitude Oft as he called to mind those exstacies,

And whence they flowed; and from them he acquired Wisdom which works through patiencethence he learned In many a calmer hour of sober thought To look on Nature with an humble heart, Self-questioned where it did not understand, And with a superstitious eye of love. Thus passed the time, yet to the neighbouring town He often went with what small overplus His earnings might supply, and brought away The book which most had tempted his desires While at the stall he read. Among the hills He gazed upon that mighty orb of song, The divine Milton. Lore of different kind, The annual savings of a toilsome life, The schoolmaster suppliedbooks that explain The purer elements of truth involved In lines and numbers, and by charm severe, Especially perceived where Nature droops And feeling is suppressed, preserve the mind Busy in solitude and poverty. And thus employed he many a time o'erlooked The listless hours when in the hollow vale, Hollow and green, he lay on the green turf In lonesome idleness. What could he do? Nature was at his heart, and he perceived, Though yet he knew not how, a wasting power In all things which from her sweet influence Might tend to wean him. Therefore with her hues, Her forms, and with the spirit of her forms, He clothed the nakedness of austere truth. While yet he lingered in the elements Of science, and among her simplest laws, His triangles they were the stars of heaven, The silent stars; his altitudes the crag Which is the eagle's birth-place, or some peak Familiar with forgotten years which shews Inscribed, as with the silence of the thought, Upon its bleak and visionary sides The history of many a winter storm, Or obscure records of the path of fire. Yet with these lonesome sciences he still Continued to amuse the heavier hours Of solitude. Yet not the less he found In cold elation, and the lifelessness Of truth by oversubtlety dislodged From grandeur and from love, an idle toy, The dullest of all toys. He saw in truth

A holy spirit and a breathing soul; He reverenced her and trembled at her look, When with a moral beauty in her face She led him through the worlds. But now, before his twentieth year was passed, Accumulated feelings pressed his heart With an encreasing weight; he was o'erpowered By Nature, and his spirit was on fire With restless thoughts. His eye became disturbed, And many a time he wished the winds might rage When they were silent. Far more fondly now Than in his earlier season did he love Tempestuous nights, the uproar and the sounds That live in darkness. From his intellect, And from the stillness of abstracted thought, He sought repose in vain. I have heard him say That at this time he scanned the laws of light Amid the roar of torrents, where they send From hollow clefts up to the clearer air A cloud of mist, which in the shining sun Varies its rainbow hues. But vainly thus, And vainly by all other means he strove To mitigate the fever of his heart. From Nature and her overflowing soul He had received so much that all his thoughts Were steeped in feeling. He was only then Contented when with bliss ineffable He felt the sentiment of being spread O'er all that moves, and all that seemeth still, O'er all which, lost beyond the reach of thought And human knowledge, to the human eye Invisible, yet liveth to the heart; O'er all that leaps, and runs, and shouts, and sings, Or beats the gladsome air; o'er all that glides Beneath the wave, yea, in the wave itself, And mighty depth of waters. Wonder not If such his transports were; for in all things He saw one life, and felt that it was joy. One song they sang, and it was audible Most audible then when the fleshly ear, O'ercome by grosser prelude of that strain, Forgot its functions, and slept undisturbed. These things he had sustained in solitude Even till his bodily strength began to yield Beneath their weight. The mind within him burnt, And he resolved to quit his native hills. The father strove to make his son perceive

As clearly as the old man did himself With what advantage he might teach a school In the adjoining village. But the youth, Who of this service made a short essay, Found that the wanderings of his thought were then A misery to him, that he must resign A task he was unable to perform. He asked his father's blessing, and assumed This lowly occupation. The old man Blessed him and prayed for him, yet with a heart Forboding evil. From his native hills He wandered far. Much did he see of men, Their manners, their enjoyments and pursuits, Their passions and their feelings, chiefly those Essential and eternal in the heart, Which mid the simpler forms of rural life Exist more simple in their elements, And speak a plainer language. Many a year Of lonesome meditation and impelled By curious thought he was content to toil In this poor calling, which he now pursued From habit and necessity. He walked Among the impure haunts of vulgar men Unstained; the talisman of constant thought And kind sensations in a gentle heart Preserved him. Every shew of vice to him Was a remembrancer of what he knew, Or a fresh seed of wisdom, or produced That tender interest which the virtuous feel Among the wicked, which when truly felt May bring the bad man nearer to the good, But, innocent of evil, cannot sink The good man to the bad. Among the woods A lone enthusiast, and among the hills, Itinerant in this labour he had passed The better portion of his time, and there From day to day had his affections breathed The wholesome air of Nature; there he kept In solitude and solitary thought, So pleasant were those comprehensive views, His mind in a just equipoise of love. Serene it was, unclouded by the cares Of ordinary lifeunvexed, unwarped By partial bondage. In his steady course No piteous revolutions had he felt,

No wild varieties of joy or grief. Unoccupied by sorrow of its own, His heart lay open; and, by Nature tuned And constant disposition of his thoughts To sympathy with man, he was alive To all that was enjoyed where'er he went, And all that was endured; and, in himself Happy, and quiet in his chearfulness, He had no painful pressure from within Which made him turn aside from wretchedness With coward fears. He could afford to suffer With those whom he saw suffer. Hence it was That in our best experience he was rich, And in the wisdom of our daily life. For hence, minutely, in his various rounds He had observed the progress and decay Of many minds, of minds and bodies too The history of many families, And how they prospered, how they were o'erthrown By passion or mischance, or such misrule Among the unthinking masters of the earth As makes the nations groan. He was a man, One whom you could not pass without remark If you had met him on a rainy day You would have stopped to look at him. Robust, Active, and nervous, was his gait; his limbs And his whole figure breathed intelligence. His body, tall and shapely, shewed in front A faint line of the hollowness of age, Or rather what appeared the curvature Of toil; his head looked up steady and fixed. Age had compressed the rose upon his cheek Into a narrower circle of deep red, But had not tamed his eye, which, under brows Of hoary grey, had meanings which it brought From years of youth, which, like a being made Of many beings, he had wondrous skill To blend with meanings of the years to come, Human, or such as lie beyond the grave. Long had I loved him. Oh, it was most sweet To hear him teach in unambitious style Reasoning and thought, by painting as he did The manners and the passions. Many a time He made a holiday and left his pack Behind, and we two wandered through the hills A pair of random travellers. His eye Flashing poetic fire he would repeat

The songs of Burns, or many a ditty wild Which he had fitted to the moorland harp His own sweet verseand as we trudged along, Together did we make the hollow grove Ring with our transports. Though he was untaught, In the dead lore of schools undisciplined, Why should he grieve? He was a chosen son. He yet retained an ear which deeply felt The voice of Nature in the obscure wind, The sounding mountain, and the running stream. From deep analogies by thought supplied, Or consciousnesses not to be subdued, To every natural form, rock, fruit, and flower, Even the loose stones that cover the highway, He gave a moral life; he saw them feel, Or linked them to some feeling. In all shapes He found a secret and mysterious soul, A fragrance and a spirit of strange meaning. Though poor in outward shew, he was most rich: He had a world about him'twas his own, He made itfor it only lived to him, And to the God who looked into his mind. Such sympathies would often bear him far In outward gesture, and in visible look, Beyond the common seeming of mankind. Some called it madness; such it might have been, But that he had an eye which evermore Looked deep into the shades of difference As they lie hid in all exterior forms, Near or remote, minute or vastan eye Which from a stone, a tree, a withered leaf, To the broad ocean and the azure heavens Spangled with kindred multitudes of stars, Could find no surface where its power might sleep Which spake perpetual logic to his soul, And by an unrelenting agency Did bind his feelings even as in a chain.